16 BY-WAVS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
ing-bird ; but when both are free, the latter is 
infinitely superior at every point. There isa 
wide variety of pure flute-notes expressed by 
the wild mocking-bird. These notes become 
vitiated in captivity and their tone degraded 
to the level of mere mellow piping. In the 
hedges of Cherokee rose that grew along the 
old Augustine road east of Tallahassee, mock- 
ing-birds were so numerous that their songs, 
mingling together, made a strange din which 
could be heard a long way on a still morning. 
I have already spoken of the injustice done 
the mocking-bird by the name given it, but at 
this point I may say that other American song 
birds of a superior order have suffered even 
more from this cause. Cat-bird and thrasher, 
—what names to be embalmed in poetry and 
romance! It required all the genius of Emer- 
son successfully to use a titmouse as the sub- 
ject fora poem. If Bryant’s Lines to a Water- 
fowl had been addressed to a duck or a snake- 
bird, one would scarcely be content to accept 
the poem as perfect. A name certainly has 
an intrinsic value. 
Mr. Cable in his powerful novel, Dr. Sevier, 
speaks of the mocking-bird’s morning note as 
unmusical. At certain seasons of the year the 
bird’s voice is not especially pleasing, but this 
is not in song-time. Early morning and the 
twilight of evening in the spring call forth its 
most charming powers. Its night song is 
sweet and peculiarly effective, but except on 
rare occasions in the nesting season, when the 
moon is very brilliant the nocturnal notes are 
pitched in a minor key and the voice is less 
flexible and brilliant, as if the bird were sing- 
ing in its sleep. 
